It is desirable for a nail to hold into the surface, which it is desired to join to another item. Generally speaking, a nail is driven through one surface into another surface in order to hold both the object having the first surface adjacent to the object having the second surface. A nail, by its very nature, does not hold well for all purposes.
It is desired to increase the holding power of the nail without increasing the difficulty of driving the nail. The prior art includes a number of options for accomplishing this increased holding power. However, where the prior art increases the gripping capability, it either increases the damage to the wood as the nail is being driven or makes the nail harder to drive.
It is desired to increase the gripping capability of the nail without causing these adverse effects. These conflicting requirements seem very difficult in that the desired results are contradictory. If a nail can be designed to overcome this problem, a great advantage can be obtained.
In the prior art, the specific uses of the uniformed round cross section, for any of the U-shaped grip arms are never listed. The listings of the increased fastening, or gripping powers of a round cross-section, over a triangular knife-like cross section within the U-shaped grip arms of the prior arts are never mentioned.
The round cross-section is absent from any knife-like edges. The nails of the prior art have the long knife-like edges for their plain, flat, and lifeless; and U-shaped grip arm branch members within their knife-like triangular cross-section. This structure gouges-out the nail hole wood larger than the intended nail shank, as the prior art shank is twisted to coil the prior art grip arms around the shank.
Twisting of the grip arms within the nails of the prior art can do additional wood gouging. The terminal-ends of the branch arm members within the grip arms are pointed as each rests against the nail hole wood. As the shank is twisting to coil the grip arms around the shank, the tearing of the wood takes place.
The nails of the prior art will twist the nail shank, thereby coiling, or spiralling the grip arms around the nail shank, and then gouging-out the wooden nail hole. It is desired to avoid this destruction of the wood, while still having the desired holding power.